3D printing is a class of rapidly emerging technologies that translate a 3-dimensional computer model of an object into a physical representation of that model. The key difference from CNC machining is that 3D printers are additive rather than subtractive. That is, they “build up” a model from a base material like plastic powder or melted plastic wire, rather than “remove” material from a work piece the way a lathe or milling machine does.<\/p>\n
3D printers use many different methods to create an object. The most common printers used by hobbyists work like a “robot glue-gun” to deposit small amounts of melted plastic onto a stand or platen, using a computer-controlled carriage that can move precisely in X, Y, and Z to create a volume. Other printers use a photo-reactive resin that is exposed in thin “slices” using a laser or a video projection system, and the portions of the resin that are illuminated react by hardening. Still others work by fusing a bed of powdered material like nylon with a laser.<\/p>\n
The printers I use are a filament printer, the Ultimaker S5, and a laser-based photo-reactive resin printer, the FormLabs Form 2. These are solid examples of each type of 3D printing, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n
The S5 is equipped with a Material Station that holds up to six spools of filament that you can select from automatically. The nice thing about the Material Station is that, if you run out of a particular filament during a long print job, if another spool of the same filament is available on the same extruder, it will automatically swap over and continue the print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
3D printing is a class of rapidly emerging technologies that translate a 3-dimensional computer model of an object into a physical representation of that model. The key difference from CNC machining is that 3D printers are additive rather than subtractive. That is, they “build up” a model from a base material like plastic powder or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":34,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-48","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veryinterestingthings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veryinterestingthings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veryinterestingthings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veryinterestingthings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veryinterestingthings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/veryinterestingthings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556,"href":"https:\/\/veryinterestingthings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48\/revisions\/556"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veryinterestingthings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veryinterestingthings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}